Barcelona Robotics Firm Theker Raises $85 Million in Series A

Barcelona-based AI robotics startup Theker has raised $85 million in a Series A funding round to accelerate the deployment of its autonomous, AI-native robots in industrial environments [2]. The investment, which the company describes as the largest robotics Series A round ever in Europe, was led by the venture capital firm CRV [2].

Key takeaways

• The $85 million funding round included participation from Samsung, LVMH, Cathay Innovation, 20VC, and Henkel Ventures [2].
• This investment marks the first time both Samsung and LVMH have invested in a Spanish startup [4].
• Founded in 2022, Theker aims to replace rigid, task-specific industrial robots with generalist machines that adapt to changing environments in real time [2].
• The company plans to use the capital to expand its team across engineering and software departments and deepen its proprietary robotics stack [2].

Scaling AI-Native Industrial Robotics

Theker, founded by Carla Gómez Cano and Jiaqiang Ye Zhu, is positioning its technology as a new category of industrial robotics [2]. Unlike traditional systems that require costly, manual reconfiguration for specific tasks, Theker’s robots are designed to operate autonomously in sectors such as logistics, manufacturing, retail, food and beverage, and waste management [2]. The company claims its systems can deploy in days and continuously learn while in production, helping operators address persistent labor shortages and improve throughput [4].

The Series A round follows a €18 million seed round raised less than a year prior [2]. According to Gómez Cano, the company’s goal is to move beyond laboratory demonstrations to provide robots that are functional upon arrival and improve over time [4]. The new funding will support the company’s efforts to scale these deployments across global industrial operations [2].

Why it matters

Theker’s fundraising success highlights a broader trend of growth within the Spanish technology sector, which has recently attracted significant international interest [1]. The investment coincides with other major capital inflows into the region, such as Amazon’s planned €18 billion investment to expand data centers and boost AI development in Spain [3].

While the company claims to have successfully bridged the gap between research and real-world factory utility, the industry continues to watch whether such systems can perform reliably at scale across diverse geographies [4]. As the company expands its team and technology stack, the backing from global conglomerates like Samsung and LVMH serves as a notable signal of institutional interest in the future of physical AI and industrial automation [4].